Then Mac and Sal were at the trunk, opening Mac’s locker of supplies, including bulletproof vests, a shotgun, extra ammo.
Kimberly got on the radio, advising Dispatch that they had discovered a vehicle that matched an active APB and were now proceeding with caution. Backup requested, please proceed with discretion. No lights, no sirens. With any luck, Mac and Sal could lure Ginny out, and it would all be over before it even started. They’d arrest the girl, save the child. After the day they’d had, they could use a happy ending.
The men drifted down the street and, soon enough, were swallowed by the gloom.
The man flipped Rita onto her back. She cried out as the motion aggravated her hurt hip. For her troubles, he slapped her. He was tough, this one. Better than the girl. He went through the bulky rolls of her clothes, quickly finding the Colt and yanking it from the waist of her pants.
He straightened, his teeth a flash of white against the shadows. “Arming yourself against me or the boy? Bet you don’t know just how much trouble that kid is. Why, the things that boy has already done…”
He chuckled to himself, as if privy to a joke she’d never understand. Then he lifted her bodily off the floor and stuffed her roughly into sitting position in one of the kitchen chairs. She bit her lip this time to keep from screaming, but the fresh wave of pain made the world spin. She thought she might black out.
He must’ve thought she would, too, because he slapped her again, and that jerked her to attention. She thought she saw a faint movement behind him. A shadow flickering along the wall.
Joseph, she prayed in her mind. Please, Joseph, if there was ever a time to cause a stir…
Except the shadow turned into a solid form. The girl, coming down the stairs, dragging the boy behind her.
“’Bout time you got here,” the girl said. She shoved the boy forward. He stumbled, then fell at the man’s feet. His cheeks were covered with bright red marks, some already dewed with blood.
He had not gone without a fight; the girl’s arms bore similar scratches, though she now held his knife in her fist.
“Found him in the attic,” the girl reported. “Stupid little shit.”
The man reached down, grabbed the boy by the scruff of the neck, and jerked his head back, until the boy was forced to look him in the eye.
“What’d I tell you, boy? No such thing as gettin’ away. You belong to me.”
The boy didn’t say anything. His face had closed up, shut down. Rita could tell he was sinking somewhere deep inside himself. Saving what little bit of himself he could.
The man seemed to know it, too. “Well, boy, you know what’s gotta happen.”
The boy didn’t talk, didn’t move.
“You disobeyed me. Now you gotta be punished.”
“Can I do it?” the girl asked immediately.
“Shut the fuck up. Don’t you think you’ve caused me enough headache for one day?”
The girl shut up.
The man was regarding the boy. Rita was waiting for him to do something violent. Strike out with his fist, lash out with his leg. Instead, the man started looking around the room. Then his gaze fell on the Colt pistol, sitting on the kitchen table.
He picked it up. “Boy,” he said. “Come here.”
The boy obediently rose to his feet, stepped forward.
The man pointed to Rita, where she sat, bound and pain-crazed on the hard wooden chair.
“You brought this on yourself, boy. I told you there could be no outsiders. I told you what would happen if you ever asked for help. Do you remember what I said?”
The boy’s gaze dropped down. With a crack, the man openhanded him across the face. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, boy! Do you remember what I said? DO YOU REMEMBER?”
“Yes, sir,” the boy whispered.
“I didn’t lie, boy. I never lie.” Then the man turned and pointed the pistol at Rita’s forehead.
“Tell her goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” the boy whispered.
And just as Rita closed her eyes, just as she braced herself for the impact of the bullet shattering her temple, the cracking sound happened again, and she opened her eyes to discover the man had struck the boy, this time so hard the boy had fallen to the floor.
“DO YOU THINK I’D LET YOU GET OFF THAT EASY? DO YOU THINK I’M THAT NICE? OR DO YOU THINK I’M THAT STUPID?”
“No, no, no,” the boy whispered, begged, pleaded.
“GET TO YOUR FEET, BOY.”
The boy rose.
“TAKE THIS PISTOL, BOY.”
The boy obediently reached for the Colt.
“NOW SHOOT THAT BITCH!”
The boy turned and pointed the gun at Rita.
She didn’t close her eyes this time. She wanted him to see her face. She wanted him to know that she forgave him.
Behind him, a cupboard door suddenly opened.
The man whirled, looked around. “Who goes there?”
Joseph, Rita prayed in her mind. Please, Joseph.
A drawer rattled, cracked open.
“What the fuck?”
Then the pans were shaking in the cabinet, the teakettle sliding across the stove, the faucet cranking water. The man stood in the middle of the kitchen; he screamed at Rita at the top of his lungs. “Who the hell is doing that?”
It came to her, maybe just the memory of what the girl had said, or maybe with Joseph’s help. She said, “The Burgerman says hi.”
The man started to roar.
The boy pulled the trigger.
At the front of the house, Mac and Sal crept up the steps. They approached the door, hunkered low to keep out of sight of the windows. They came up on either side of the glass panes, did a quick inspection, then returned to their positions of backs pressed against the exterior walls.
“Windows are covered,” Mac whispered.
Across from him, Sal nodded. “Guess Ginny doesn’t want her neighbors seeing in.”
Mac leaned forward, tested the knob, found that it turned.
“Open,” he mouthed.
Sal arched a brow at that piece of luck, then shrugged. “All right, let’s do it.”
Mac had just twisted the knob when they heard a booming scream, followed immediately by a gunshot.
Sal had his radio out, rattling off the address. “Shots fired, shots fired. Requesting immediate backup. All units to assist…”
Then he and Mac ducked low and rushed into the parlor.
“This is the police. Drop your weapons!”
Kimberly was just leaning forward to adjust the radio volume when a knock at her window jerked her upright. She was already reaching for her shoulder harness when her eyes registered the curler-capped face outside the car window. It was the neighbor woman from last night, or maybe that was this morning. The one she and Sal had talked to while watching Dinchara’s house burn.
Kimberly popped open the door, got out.
“You’re the police, right?” the woman was asking, clearly agitated.
“Can I help you?”
“Something’s wrong at the house next door. I just happened to look out my bedroom window and notice the light on in the attic. Someone had taped something to one of the windows. It looks like nine-one-one.”
Kimberly jerked her head toward the structure in question. “You mean that house, where the girl lives?”
The neighbor frowned at her. “Girl? Rita’s no girl. Hell, she’s ninety if she’s a day. Her family has owned that house for generations.”
Kimberly’s turn to be confused. “I thought you meant the house next door, the one with the big, wraparound covered patio…”
“That’s the one.”
“No girl lives there?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Does…does a girl visit sometimes?”
“No. Least not that I’ve seen. Though a man showed up about twenty minutes ago. Wearing a red baseball cap.”
The man felt pain first. That surprised him. It ha
d been so long since he had felt anything connected with his own body, he had assumed his nerve endings were done, used up, burnt out. His skin was nothing more than an exoskeleton and he liked it that way.
But his side felt like it had caught on fire. He grabbed at it, startled to feel more pain, then encountered the shocking wetness of his own blood.
He turned to the boy. The kid pulled the trigger again.
This bullet caught him up high, in the shoulder. He twisted back, still standing, and heard another boom, felt another searing pain, and then heard another boom and another one.
His legs buckled. He slowly sank to the ground, staring at the gray pall of the ceiling. Was it his imagination, or were the shadows moving up there? He thought he saw the Burgerman’s face, and he whimpered.
The girl was screaming. Why was the stupid girl screaming if he was the one who’d been shot? He wished she would shut up. He wanted everyone to shut up. The girl, the gun, the terrible violence seeping into his brain.
And then he heard fresh yells, this time deep and authoritative. “Police, police. Hands up. Drop your weapon.”
The girl was screaming again, the old woman telling the boy, “Put it down, child. It’s okay, just put it down.”
He could feel his blood seeping out of him, into the floor. He could feel himself dying and he ought to know, as he’d seen it enough times. The way that first boy’s body had sagged, then collapsed all those years ago. And the girls, one by one, their blood running from their veins down the bathtub drain as he watched excitedly, until the last drop was gone and they became nothing more than limp dolls, and he suddenly went from feeling so powerful to being nothing but an overgrown kid, playing with oversize toys. Until he kidnapped the next one, of course. And the one after that.
The girl had the gun now. He knew because the police were yelling at her, and the old woman was telling the boy to duck, duck, duck. The girl was trouble. He’d always known that. It was why he could never quite bring himself to kill her. Because she was trouble and the thrill was always bigger when he could force her into line.
Maybe she would shoot him, too. She would like that.
He wondered about the baby. His? Aaron’s? Another man’s? And he thought, in these last few seconds he had left, that he was glad he was dying. Before he ever saw the baby. Before he ruined its life.
Then a window suddenly shattered in the back of the kitchen. From the corner of his eye, he saw the girl turn to counter this fresh attack. A shape flew across the space, caught the girl at the knees, and crashed her to the ground.
A moment later, a bloodstained detective rose from the floor, the Colt in his hand.
“Brother,” the man whispered.
And Sal finally looked him in the eyes.
Kimberly couldn’t climb through the window. Instead, she had to wait until Mac moved the armoire and opened the back door. She had raced around the house, seeing the lone beam of flashlight on the kitchen, and had heard enough to understand what was going on. She’d aimed the rock in Ginny’s direction and prayed the distraction would be enough for Sal and Mac to seize control.
Now, as Mac flipped on the overhead light, she spied an old woman, hunched, panting in pain, confined to a kitchen chair, while a young boy with a blank expression kneeled at her feet. Ginny Jones was on her stomach five feet away, hands cuffed, feet bound.
And Sal was bent over the body of a man sprawled in blood on the floor.
“Vincent,” Sal murmured. “Vinny.”
He touched the man’s face, his fingers so gentle it hurt to watch.
“I’m sorry,” Sal whispered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“Saw you…that day.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Wanted…to see Mom. Come…home. Saw you.”
“Shhh…shhh…shhh.”
“Good…son. In your uniform. Not me. You were right…about the Burgerman…Grinding naughty boys to dust.”
“Shhh…shhh…shhh.”
“Not strong…not like you. Hurt. Tired. Very tired.”
“It’s all right now. I’m here, Vinny, I’m here.”
“Azalea bush. Must find…azalea bush.”
“It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”
“I wish,” the man gasped. “I wish.”
The man died. Sal cradled his brother’s body in his arms, and wept.
EPILOGUE
IT TOOK EIGHT DAYS TO REMOVE ALL THE BODIES from Blood Mountain. Each corpse was carefully lowered onto a clean sheet, then wrapped up and carted down the mountain in a specially prepared litter. A team of forensic anthropologists came in to handle the load, setting up shop in the county morgue, where they could murmur at the wonderful condition of the mummified remains. Not many bodies were found after long-term exposure hanging in the woods. The potential for case studies was staggering.
Family members of missing girls were notified of the proper process for submitting DNA samples to match against the remains. A database was built. Testing began. People could expect to wait six to nine months for results.
Ginny Jones submitted DNA, claiming to want to identify her mother’s remains. Kimberly wasn’t sure the girl would. How much had Ginny cared about her mother’s death? It certainly hadn’t stopped her from forming a twisted alliance with a twisted man.
The state prosecutor charged Ginny with six counts of accessory to felony murder. He contended that Ginny had knowingly lured fellow prostitutes to their death, while also aiding and abetting in the abduction of a seven-year-old boy, Joshua Ferris, aka Scott.
Ginny had countered with the victim card. She had been kidnapped by Dinchara, raped, brutalized, tortured. At a certain point, she had to help him, it was the only way she could survive. Just listen to the tapes, the endless tapes of all that he had done, including to her mother.
Interestingly enough, the only recording that survived was the one Kimberly had made from Aaron’s first anonymous phone call. Everything else appeared to have been destroyed in the fire at Dinchara’s residence. But the bodies remained, the thin, mummified forms testifying louder than words to just what one man had been able to do.
Sal had taken a leave of absence from work. Kimberly had called him twice. He never returned those calls. She heard through the grapevine that he was spending a great deal of time with his mother. The initial public outcry had been so great, with sensational details of the murder spree screaming across every headline, he and his mother had had to go into seclusion.
According to the rumor mill, Sal had filed papers requiring DNA testing of Ginny’s baby. If the child was Dinchara’s, Sal and his mother planned on asking for sole custody.
Kimberly wondered if it would be enough for them, or if they would simply lie awake, night after night, waiting for something terrible to happen down the hall.
Life went on. Harold recovered from his wound, returned to work with a medal from the governor and enormous fanfare. When Kimberly’s ERT presented him with his very own pair of custom-fit Limmer boots, he blushed like a schoolboy. And Rachel hugged him so hard the betting pool was already taking odds on a wedding date.
While Kimberly grew fat. Enormously, couldn’t-see-her-toes fat. True to her prediction, Mac had to tie her shoes for her. Which didn’t happen so much anymore, as she was officially on a leave of absence. With two weeks until her due date, she had to set up a nursery in their apartment in Savannah while Mac worked long hours in his new position, trying to get up to speed before the baby was born.
So Kimberly fussed over gingham ruffles and teddy bear stencils and all the stuff a woman like her had once sworn was foolish, but now had become the center of her entire being. She ironed curtains, dusted the ceiling fans, and washed the top of the refrigerator. Then she purchased a medicine cabinet and demanded Mac install it that very night, because there was no way she was giving birth with their minor collection of pharmaceuticals still housed in a baby-accessible bathroom drawer.
Sometimes, w
hen she was not nesting with the frantic compulsiveness of a nine-months-pregnant woman, random thoughts would pop into her head. She might discover a garden spider and spend the next hour thinking of Dinchara, the boy he had once been and the man he had become. And she would remember Aaron and that last look on his face before he pulled the trigger.
Aaron turned out to be Randy Cooper. He had been kidnapped walking home from school in Decatur ten years earlier. His family had claimed his body, his twenty-two-year-old sister, Sarah, now at Harvard Law, returning for the funeral. Sarah had thanked the small gathering of neighbors and law enforcement officers on behalf of her family. They were grateful for the closure the funeral allowed. They understood they were fortunate to have this moment, as so many families didn’t. And they would choose today, and all days, to remember Randy as the laughing, happy boy they had known, and not the victim he had become.
Kimberly wondered if Sal was struggling to make the same choice. Each day, every day. How best to know his brother.
Kimberly installed additional locks on every bedroom window. She ordered a home security system complete with a panic alarm. She purchased a video baby monitor so she could see at all times what was happening in her baby’s room.
And maybe it was panicky and neurotic. But maybe this was what a woman who worked in crime and had already buried two members of her family needed to do. Mac didn’t question her. He let her do what she did, and when she could bring herself to speak, of both her consuming fear and her tentative hope, he made the time to listen.
One week before her due date, Kimberly went into labor. With Mac by her side, and Rainie and Quincy flying in, she gave birth to a little girl, Elizabeth Amanda McCormack.
Three days later, she and Mac brought their little girl home. Mac took a couple of weeks off from work and they happily spent their time changing impossibly small diapers and marveling over ten perfect fingers and ten perfect toes. After much debate, they determined that little Eliza had Mac’s dark hair, but Kimberly’s pointed face. Obviously she possessed her mother’s intelligence, as well as her father’s strength. As for the temper tantrums, they both considered the other one guilty of providing that DNA.